How England can finally win the Ashes

Spectator

3 days ago

With the summer's Test matches over, England's cricket coach and captain will now be wondering how to avoid our usual trouncing in Australia this winter. Normally we try to win and we get walloped. On the last three occasions we've ventured Down Under, Australia have either whitewashed us 5-0 or beaten us 4-0 with one game drawn. And, weather permitting, Australia don't just win – they usually crush us by massive, embarrassing margins: an innings and 123 runs, ten wickets, 381 runs… These humiliations show that on their home turf Australia are approximately twice as good as we are. Australia often score more runs in one innings than England can manage in two.
Unless we take drastic measures, that could well be the fate that awaits us this winter too. This summer's games in English conditions against an Indian team in transition have exposed chronic weaknesses. Our injury-prone bowlers often find it difficult to take wickets and two of our specialist batsmen average 30-35, instead of the Test match standard of 40-plus. The Aussies will ruthlessly expose these shortcomings – it happens every time.
So what to do? Bear with me just a moment while I explain how playing for a draw helped Garry Kasparov wrest the world chess championship from Karpov. The winner was to be the first to win six games. Karpov, the reigning champion, took an early lead: 4-0 (with five draws) after just nine games. So Kasparov switched to a survival strategy. When trying to win he had often lost, so now he concentrated on drawing. It worked: drawing proved much more feasible and, eventually, led to victory. With his opponent exhausted after five gruelling months and 40 draws, Kasparov won two consecutive games. The match was then called off on health grounds but Kasparov went on to win the rematch.
A similar strategy could work for our cricketers this winter. Instead of walking straight into another brutal mauling, we could try a devious, Kasparov-inspired plan. The Australians think they are going to bag a bunch of World Cricket Championship points by giving us another drubbing – but in order to do that they have to bowl us out twice. To stop them doing that, we should pack the side with batsmen. I am not suggesting that we pick no bowlers – that would not, as they say, be cricket – but I am suggesting that all our bowlers should also be excellent batsmen. For decades we have been selecting not the best wicketkeeper but the wicketkeeper who bats best; now it is time to double down and do the same with the bowlers.
The bowling could be entrusted to, for example, Stokes, Bethell, Root, Dawson and Rehan Ahmed. They can all turn their arm: Stokes, for example, has 230 Test wickets and Root 73. More importantly, they are all good batsmen. They would be joined by wicketkeeper Jamie Smith, Test match batting average 49, and five other batsmen.
We would not be sacrificing much by replacing specialist bowlers with batsmen who can bowl a bit. Our specialist bowlers, after all, are not that special and often fail dismally against Australia. In the last Ashes series, the legendary Jimmy Anderson, one of the greatest bowlers ever, only managed a paltry total of five wickets, each of which cost an eye-watering 85 runs. And he averaged just nine with the bat. Meanwhile, in the same series, Joe Root took six wickets with his part-time spin at just 28 runs apiece, while also averaging over 50 with the bat.
Admittedly, relying on part-time bowlers means that the Aussies are likely to post huge scores. If Australia win the toss they could well bat for two days and declare when they get to about 800. That is why most of our bowlers should be spinners who can bowl long spells. Their job will be to contain the Australians with defensive fields; fortunately they all have plenty of experience bowling as economically as possible in limited overs cricket.
But then it will be Australia's turn to suffer. If they can score 800 with the conventional five or six batsmen, then England's 11 batsmen should also be able to score 800. Normally tailenders do not last long, but we would not have any tailenders – just batsmen. Batsmen all the way down. We would bat and bat… and bat. Against exhausted bowlers, we might even see our number 11 become the first ever to score a Test century. Those mammoth first-innings scores would take the match into the final day with both sides still scheduled to bat again. There simply would not be time for the Aussies to beat us.
Will high-scoring draws drive the crowds away? No: it is short, one-sided games and dead rubbers that are the real turn-off. The cricket-loving Australian public would be delighted to see the Poms pose a genuine challenge for once, taking the fight into the fifth day and keeping the series alive.
And perhaps – allow me to dream for a moment – having drawn the first four Test matches, in the final game we win the toss and bat, posting 800 again. Then, their minds scrambled after long days in the field, and realising that they can never win, the demoralised Australians begin to understand how Karpov felt. They are skittled out twice – those batsmen who can bowl that I mentioned are all perfectly capable of producing wicket-taking deliveries – and we take the series 1-0.
This cunning scheme will be dismissed out of hand as ridiculous. But surely, sleepwalking into another ignominious shellacking is even more stupid? And since I am confident that that is exactly what is going to happen, I am going to lay a big bet on England losing heavily. Happens every time.